ROAD KILL AND SUCH

A lie can make it half way around the world before the truth can even get legs under it. Today the Internet permits anyone anywhere to make claims with little more than belief to back them up. It seems that the more sensational and threatening the story is, the more vigorously it is promoted. This is partly due to our ever-present fears, but also because such stories are just plain engaging and entertaining.

With regard to pet food, paranoia also abounds because people en masse have bought into the granddaddy of all myths: the 100% complete and balanced diet. By so doing, they have made their pet totally dependent upon mysterious processed pet foods and the unreliable puffery by producers.

Reasoning people seeking the best pet food intuitively know that feeding only one food meal after meal requires that food to be perfect. Problem is, no singular food is perfect--in spite of complete and balanced (perfect) claims--and people intuitively know this as well. This creates vulnerability to scary myths about what is or is not the best pet food.

How much better for people to do the obvious: feed dogs and cats as they would feed themselves--in variety and with intelligent supplements. This naturally attenuates any danger from any single food.

Of late, particularly since the melamine disaster, pet food companies are viewed with increasing suspicion (even though pet food companies were really not to blame for the contamination of their ingredients, since testing for every conceivable toxin that could be in foods was and is impossible.) Fueling the evil corporation flames are politicians, regulatory agencies, and other organizations broad-stroke demonizing the private sector. This is not to say companies cannot err, be incompetent, or even deliberately mislead the public.

But few of the stories are actually true. Take, for example, the oft-repeated rumors that pet food companies use road kill and gather up euthanized animals from shelters for ingredients. On their face these claims are outrageous--just as outrageous as would be a claim that soup companies are grinding up bodies from morgues and of dead homeless people. Astonishing stories surely demand credible evidence other than hearsay. Such evidence does not exist.

Here is what actually happens in the pet food industry. Pet food companies purchase their ingredients from food distributors, not from animal shelters or vans picking up road kill. Distributors are controlled by the FDA and the USDA, neither of which permit the sale of such ingredients. In turn, pet food companies are regulated by the FDA, USDA, each state feed regulatory body, and AAFCO (which does not approve such ingredients). This is not to suggest that governmental oversight should make anyone rest easy, but at least it is something and it creates standards with penalties.

If you ask people who believe these myths where a pet food manufacturer could go to find a source of road kill and euthanized pets, there will be no answer.

Also, if this practice is as common as promoted, ask the believers to name a company that uses such ingredients. Then wait. No reply will come other than something like "I don't know off hand, but I do know that is what pet food companies are doing."

When people who believe such things are asked for evidence that pets have been harmed by this supposed practice, no reply.

In other words, nobody seems to be able to supply a source of euthanized animals and road kill, the name of a pet food company that uses such ingredients, or evidence of any harm that has come to animals. But that does not seem to slow the zeal. The human mind, once it latches onto a belief, is an amazing thing.

Now none of the above suggests that a person should not be vigilantly critical about what they eat or feed. It also does not deny that pet food companies need to be scrutinized. But reason and facts should rule our minds, not demons and sensational stories.

Keep this perspective and you will not get too distracted by the endless succession of pet food mythologies and bogeymen. The bottom line is that you cannot know for certain what is in a processed food regardless of what the package says or what the company markets. The only way around this is to prepare your own foods grown at home. But even this is not foolproof since there are tens of thousands of natural and synthetic toxins in the air, water, land, animals, and plants. This is not to mention the danger of possible nutritional imbalances if fresh food meals are not prepared correctly.

Thus the best approach to the best pet food is: Select foods carefully using the principles in this series of articles, don't believe marketing that is not backed by science and logic, and vary, rotate, and supplement intelligently.

Video: Drunken Animals

African animals enjoying marula fruit that's just a bit too ripe...

Thought for the day: "The right to be heard does not automatically include the right to be taken seriously." – Hubert H. Humphrey

Word of the day: fortified - verb: a processed food is referred to as fortified when it has extra nutrients like vitamins and minerals added to it. Common examples include pet foods and breakfast cereals. Fortification is necessary because processing and storage results in the diminution of nutrients. Many nutritional diseases in the past, such as beriberi, pellagra, scurvy, and rickets were the result of feeding processed foods that were not fortified. These same diseases are rampant today but not identified as such. They are all the chronic degenerative diseases that plague pet and human populations because even fortification of processed foods is not enough.